When You Can't Walk
by Jace911
Summary: When the Zerg Swarm launches a full-scale invasion of Terran space, the crew of the Firefly-class transport Serenity has a choice to make: risk their lives doing what they can to help, or stay out of the way and take what they can get in the chaos.
1. Prologue

**Serenity Valley, on the planet Turaxis II**

**March 5****th****, 2489**

Despite the fact that Turaxis' star had set hours ago, Serenity Valley was illuminated by fire.

Explosions rippled down the natural chokepoint, accompanied by the staccato sounds of automatic rifles and the irregular clap of cannon fire. From the squat hills scattered inside the valley, soldiers in hulking power armor fired down on black-armored Kel-Morian Rippers as the latter attempted to push through the Confederate defenses with troop carriers and armor. A small number of delta-shaped Kel-Morian "Hellhound" fighters swooped down on any Confederates caught in the open, spraying the open ground with their burst lasers and flash-frying their targets inside their armor.

Staff Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds of the Confederate 57th Marine Outlanders Regiment charged up the slope of one of his unit's strongpoints. His armor's servos whirred as he stomped up the hill whilst clutching a massive gauss rifle in his gauntlets, and as he reached the top his helmet's golden visor slid open. Mal glanced to the right as he heard the familiar shriek of aircraft engines, and he watched as a squad of marines on an adjacent hill fall victim to a pass by one of the Hellhounds. He raised his rifle and squeezed the trigger as it swooped by less than thirty meters overhead, but if any of his shots connected the Hellhound took no notice of it. _Need to find something bigger,_ he thought as he turned back to the bunker sitting atop the hill and hurried inside.

The building was in bad shape. A Kel-Morian rocket had cracked the top open like a can of sardines, and the bodies of three marines were scattered here and there. The bunker was still occupied, though; Mal saw half a dozen of brown-armored figures leaning against the firing slits on the northeast wall, spraying gauss spikes at the advancing Kel-Morians. "Short bursts!" one of them ordered, a woman by the sound of her voice. "Pick your targets!"

"Zoe!" Mal called as he moved to take position by one of the other Confederates, "That you?"

The woman looked over at him, and her visor lifted to reveal a dark-skinned woman with nonregulation hair filling the confines of her helmet. "Good to see you're still alive, sir," Corporal Zoe Alleyne replied, yelling to be heard over the chatter of weapons fire. A sudden blast outside shook the bunker–_short round from one of our siege tanks_, Mal guessed–and the marines instinctively covered their heads for a moment before opening fire again. "However long that lasts," she added.

"You get through to Colonel Vanderspool yet?" Mal asked as he ducked below the lip of the bunker to reload. "What'd he say about reinforcements?"

Zoe shook her head, crouching down to face him. "He said Command's holding the 321st until they can assess our status–"

"Our _status?_" Mal asked incredulously. "Our status is that we need some gorram reinforcements!"

He turned at the waist to glance at one of the other marines–CMC-300 powered suits were too bulky to let one look over their shoulder–and barked "Greene! Get over here!"

"Yes, sir!"

Zoe stood and stuck the barrel of her rifle through the firing slit as Greene shimmied over, keeping his helmet below the lip of the slit. Mal jerked a thumb at the transmitter sitting in the corner of the bunker. "Get on the horn with Vanderspool; tell him the Rippers are gonna run right through us if we don't get some support to close the gaps in our lines."

"He's not gonna budge without a lieutenant's authorization code, sir," Zoe pointed out, still methodically triggering burst after burst from her rifle.

Mal cursed under his breath and glanced around before moving over to the body of one of the bunker's former occupants. A quick check of the marine's dog tags confirmed his hunch, and he appropriated the man's dome-shaped helmet before handing it to Greene. "Here, you're Lieutenant Greene. Congratulations on your promotion, now _get me some fekking reinforcements!_"

The bunker shook from another hit, and pieces of debris rained down on the armored soldiers. One of them moaned in terror.

"_Hey!_" Mal snapped. "Stay focused!" As the other marines turned to look at him, he could see the fear in most of their eyes. Zoe, to her credit, displayed only the same grim determination she'd had for most of the war.

Mal knew they were close to snapping–the Outlanders had been fighting to hold onto the valley for close to a month with little relief–so he tried a different tactic. "The Kel-Morians said they were gonna waltz through this valley," he said, his voice solid and unwavering. "Remember that? Remember how we took those words and rammed it down their gorram throats? We've already done the impossible. We're mighty. Now all we gotta do is wait a little while longer. Command's gonna send in the Rangers to tear the Kay-Ems a new one, and all they need us to do is hold. So you hold."

Mal looked at the faces of the other marines, seeing that their fear was slowly receding with his words. "_You hold!_" he bellowed. "Go!"

Thus reinvigorated, the marines turned back to the line and renewed their efforts at holding the Kel-Morians back. As Greene knelt next to the transmitter digging through the codes on the lieutenant's helmet, Mal waved at Zoe to follow him. "Calling in the Rangers won't do much good if those Hellhounds fry us before we get reinforced," he said, dropping his visor. "Time to go duck-hunting."

Zoe nodded, sealing her own helmet as Mal exited the bunker. Before following, she turned to another Outlander from her squad, a kid named Bendis. He was curled into the corner of the bunker with his helmet open. His eyes were wide, locked onto the ground in front of him in terror as he murmured something she couldn't make out.

"Bendis," Zoe called. When he didn't respond, she raised her voice. _"Bendis!"_

The youth jerked slightly at the sharpness of her tone, but otherwise displayed no visible reaction. He continued to mutter under his breath, rocking slightly back and forth.

"Damn it," Zoe hissed. _He's lost it._

She turned and ducked out of the building, hot on Mal's heels as he trudged down the dirt slope.

Mal ran from cover to cover on his way down the hill as the battle continued to rage in all directions. Screams and frantic requests for assistance cluttered the comm, so he cut his connection to the command net and opened a direct link to Zoe's suit. "Kel-Morons've gotta have triple-A set up in the troughs somewhere," he reasoned. "They'll be expecting us to call for air support, so they'll be hiding the batteries between the hills and waiting for the dropships to show up before knocking'em out of the sky. We find one, then we bring down those Hellhounds."

"_Sounds like a plan, sir,"_ Zoe said over the radio.

Mal slowed as they reached the foot of the hill. He crouched behind the wreckage of a bipedal Goliath combat walker, its canopy shattered and its left leg mangled by a laser fire, as Zoe caught up with him. Above, he could see one of the Hellhounds circling for a run at a nearby strongpoint. The bunker was already burning from repeated hits, and as Mal watched a pair of marines emerged, their armor trailing smoke and fire but otherwise intact.

Unfortunately the Hellhound's pilot spotted them as well, and before they had made it a dozen meters from the burning structure the strike craft swooped down and unleashed a barrage of laser bolts, stitching the ground around them and throwing up particles of glass. The marines stumbled and fell, clutching at burn wounds until small-arms fire from a nearby Ripper punctured their helmets and ended their misery.

Mal raised his rifle, resting it on the Goliath's undamaged leg as he centered his sights on the Kel-Morian. The Ripper was preoccupied with stripping the marines of their ammo and supplies so Mal returned the favor on behalf of his fellow Outlanders, triggering a burst from his Impaler. The magnetically accelerated spikes tore through the Ripper's angular black armor–Mal thanked God each day that the Kel-Morians didn't have the industrial base to mass-produce power armor like the Confederacy–and sent him spinning to the ground.

"See anything?" he asked, lowering his weapon and scanning the battlefield.

"_Nothing yet, sir,"_ Zoe replied. _"We might want to–wait, I got something. Two o'clock north."_

Mal turned to look in the direction Zoe was pointing and saw what she was talking about. A tracked Kel-Morian APC was rolling along the trough between two hills, escorted by a pair of regular army grunts.

"_Looks like it's got a flak turret mounted on top,"_ Zoe noted. _"Think that'll do?"_

"It'll have to," Mal replied. The APC was about thirty meters away, and the troopers hadn't seen either of them yet. "Zoe, go possum. Wait for it to pass us by, then hit the grunts. I'll get the tracks."

"_Roger that."_

Mal shifted, placing his back against the Goliath's leg and letting his rifle fall slack. Next to him Zoe rolled onto her side and let her arms droop, as if in death. Hopefully the Kel-Morians would pass by the two of them and mistake them for just another pair of corpses without looking too hard.

Hopefully.

Within moments Mal could hear the rumble of the APC behind him as it drew closer. He couldn't hear the crunch of the Kel-Morians' boots, but he knew they had to be there. He slowed his breathing–though he knew that there was no way the troopers could hear or see him breathing inside his armor–and carefully craned his neck inside his helmet to look in Zoe's direction. _Wait for it…_

The APC had to be within five meters by now; Mal could feel the ground vibrating softly as it rolled closer. The sound reached a peak, and just when he felt that it was beginning to fade he shouted "Now!"

He rolled along the walker's leg, bringing his rifle up as he did so. The APC was a couple of meters to his left, along with one of the Kel-Morian grunts. The trooper saw Mal move and whirled, bringing his slugthrower up to deal with this unexpected threat from his flank, only to dance in place as Zoe sprayed his torso with spikes. The second trooper charged around from the other side of the APC and took a similar burst before flopping to the ground.

Mal lowered his sights until they rested on the rear wheel of the APC, then squeezed the trigger. Armor-piercing gauss spikes ripped through the wheel, then the track resting on top of it. He continued to fire, holding down the trigger and slowly tracking the rifle forward along the vehicle's base until three of the wheels were torn away. The carrier screeched to a halt as the ruined track jammed itself between the working wheels.

"Go!"

Zoe and Mal leapt to their feet and ran forward, slamming up against the APC's damaged for cover. Even through his helmet, mal could hear the Kel-Morian crew shouting as they tried to figure out what was wrong with their vehicle. "Clean it out," he told Zoe as he dropped his rifle and clambered up onto the carrier's hull. It groaned under the weight of his armor, and the suspension sagged several centimeters.

Below him, Zoe reached for one of the cylindrical grenades on her belt. She flicked the pin away with her thumb before grabbing the handle on the crew hatch and wrenching it open. A panicked shot from one of the Kel-Morians inside blew into the dirt, but before they could pour out of the APC Zoe tossed the fragmentation grenade inside and slammed the hatch shut again. One of the drivers shouted a warning.

There was a muffled _crack_ from inside, and the crew fell silent.

Mal settled into position atop the APC as he wrestled with the twin-barreled flak gun in front of him. The weapon hadn't been designed with an eight-foot armored marine in mind, but he'd found a stable position to fire from, and the holographic crosshairs were just as visible with his visor down. He clamped his hands over the controls and traversed the cannon until it was facing the first Hellhound.

The fighter was still circling, looking for its next target, when the first high-explosive shell detonated a few meters to its left. Shrapnel tore through its wing, but before the pilot could think about conducting evasive maneuvers the second shell hit its fuselage dead center and blasted the strike craft out of the sky.

Mal swung the cannons around, sweeping the sky for the next Hellhound. He spotted one pulling into the air from a recent attack run on a Confederate bunker and brought the gun mount to bear, taking the time to lead the fast-moving fighter before opening fire again.

The cannons fired, one after the other, ejecting shells steadily like a metronome. The first few shots missed their target by several meters, and the Hellhound cut down on its turn to face the commandeered APC even as more shells traced their way across the night sky. It jinked left and right in an attempt to throw off his aim.

_Come on, come on,_ Mal thought as he tried to keep his sights steady. _That's it, get over here. Gimme a bigger target._

The Hellhound was closing fast now, and Mal estimated that it was within six hundred meters when a lucky shell blasted through its right side and took the entire wing off at the roots. Mal whooped as the fighter began a slow roll along its central axis. "Yeah!"

Then he saw that it wasn't changing course. "Oh, _ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng…_"

He glanced down at Zoe; she had retreated to cover him from the Goliath and hadn't seen the Hellhound's ballistic descent. "Zoe!"

His partner glanced up just in time to see Mal leap off the APC's hull and land heavily on the ground. He grabbed his rifle and sprinted forward. "Drop drop drop!" he shouted.

Zoe obeyed, dropping flat on her stomach behind the wreckage of the Goliath as Mal dove over the walker's intact leg. He landed hard on his chest with a _crunch_ of armor on dirt–

And the Hellhound smashed into the ground meters away from the APC.

The impact rattled Mal's teeth, and he felt a wave of heat wash over him. Debris clanged against his armor, and a particularly large piece smacked against the back of his helmet and left his head ringing.

The roar from the explosion subsided after a few moments, and after his head stopped pounding like a drum Mal eased up onto his elbows and rolled onto his back. The wreckage from the Hellhound was scattered all around them in a twenty meter area, and the APC had been blasted apart by the crash. Grunting, he shifted into a seating position…and only then did he notice the meter-long spike of jagged noesteel that had impaled itself in the dirt below where his armor's crotch guard had been.

He stared at it for a moment, then looked over at Zoe. She was staggering to her feet, shaking her helmet to clear her head. When she looked over at him, Mal lifted the visor on his helmet and pointed at the debris between his legs.

She followed his gaze and stared for a moment, then shook her head in resignation as Mal started giggling.

They double-timed it back up the hill to the bunker, running on adrenaline and Mal's ecstatic disbelief.

"You saw that, right?" he asked insistently. "Your helmet cam got all that?"

"_Yes, sir, I saw it."_

"Good. Gotta see if Jumper'll paint a pair of Kay-Em birds on my armor after this…"

"_Wait, what's wrong with _your_ helmet cams?"_

"Nothing, just didn't think anyone'd believe me if I didn't have a witness."

Zoe sighed.

The bunker was still intact–well, as intact as they'd left it–but Mal couldn't see any muzzle flashes emerging from the firing slits. _Not a good sign._ The door was crumpled inward and jammed shut, so he and Zoe set aside their rifles and grabbed the leading edge. "One, two…" mal said before heaving. The suits augmented their strength, and the door eventually groaned open.

Mal activated the lights mounted on his chestpiece as he and Zoe stepped inside. "Greene, what's the status of our…"

His voice trailed off as he saw several brown-armored figures lying along the firing slit, unmoving. Another was on his stomach by the transmitter, but when Mal stomped over and rolled Greene onto his back he saw that a gauss spike had punched through the man's visor and into his head, killing him instantly.

He sighed. "Zoe," he called, gesturing at the transmitter. The corporal nodded, then jerked a thumb at the corner wordlessly before moving over to take Greene's place.

Mal looked over and saw that Bendis was still hunched in the same place they'd left him, still holding onto his rifle like a drowning man with a rope. He moved over to kneel in front of the youth and opened his visor. "Bendis. Hey kid, you there?"

Bendis looked up after a moment, and Mal could see that he was trembling inside his suit. "Snap out of it, boy," Mal said. "We're holding this valley no matter what, you hear?"

Bendis' gaze returned to the floor, and after a moment he mumbled "We're gonna die."

"No we ain't," Mal replied, standing to retrieve his rifle before grabbing Bendis' arm and hauling him up. "We ain't gonna die here today, Bendis. You know why?"

Bendis looked into Mal's face, as if searching. He shook his head.

"Because," Mal continued, reaching for a fresh magazine for his Impaler, "we are _way_ too pretty to die. Huh? You think God's gonna go and let a couple'a studs like us bite a bullet from some motherless Kel-Morian dogface?"

A smile tugged at the corner of Bendis' mouth, but died before blooming as he looked down again. "We're gonna die," he repeated, to himself more than Mal.

Before Mal could think of something to shake Bendis out of his depression, a familiar sound rose over the cacophony of war outside. He grinned. "You don't wanna listen to me?" he asked Bendis. "Fine. Listen to _that._ That there's the sound of the Colonial Rangers, comin' to send the Kel-Morians back into their holes pissin' their pants."

Mal turned towards Zoe, who had the lieutenant's helmet pressed up against her own in order to hear the status updates it was broadcasting. "Corporal, let the 321st know that we got friendlies mixed with Kay-Ems down he–"

"It's not the 321st," Zoe said in disbelief. He glanced up at him, and for the first time in a long time Mal saw real fear in her eyes. "It's the Fifth Fleet."

"What?" Mal asked in bewilderment. "The hell are they…we don't need air support, we need reinfor–"

A flash from outside caught his attention, and Mal turned towards the firing slit. Bendis and Zoe looked as well, and the three of them moved closer to get a better view.

Ships were appearing in the skies above the valley. Mal recognized the hammerhead profiles of _Behemoth_-class battlecruisers, T-shaped CF/A-17 Wraith starfighters, and other Confederate attack vessels as they descended from orbit until they were a few kilometers above the ground. For a moment they hung there, suspended by the blue-white light of their thrusters.

Then they fired.

The battlecruisers indiscriminately sprayed laser fire from their batteries, and the fighters dove down to blanket the hills and troughs with air-to-ground missiles. Explosions bloomed across Serenity Valley, followed by dozens of thunderclaps as the shock waves reached the bunker. Kel-Morian and Confederate troops alike were caught in the barrage as the fleet laid waste to their own position.

Through it all, Mal watched and never looked away. Not when the rockets began to fall around the bunker, not when an errant gauss spike buried itself in Private Bendis' gut, and not when the bombardment stopped and the cries for help started.

He never looked away.


	2. Chapter One

**Brontes System, Dominion Space**

**September 15****th****, 2504**

Mal floated in a graveyard.

Wreckage and debris tumbled slowly around him, orbiting the hulks of warships from a battle that had been decided years ago. Occasionally a smaller piece would bounce off the chestplate of his salvaged hardskin, but Mal didn't bother flinching; he'd been using CMC-300s long enough to know that nothing short of a gauss spike would damage the armor. Even so, he took care to make sure nothing came into contact with his visor; the only thing that truly unnerved him about working in zero-G was the idea that only a thin dome of transparent duraplast separated him from hard vacuum.

Mal lightly tapped the keys in his gauntlets controlling the compressed air-jets on his back, propelling him forward. To his left he could see Zoe moving forward as well, and just below her he could make out Jayne Cobb's hardskin emerging from the wreckage of an APOD-33 dropship.

_"Ain't nothin' worth haulin' in here,"_ the Kel-Morian reported over the comm in a voice that sounded like he gargled rocks. He pushed off from the wreck, burning oxygen from his jets to keep pace with Zoe and Mal.

"Keep looking," Mal replied as he held up a hand, gently pushing aside a slowly-spinning piece of armor plating. "Badger's not the kind of fellow to hand out dummy coordinates to his employees. The stuff's here somewhere."

_"Sir, we could make this go a lot faster if we just used the ship's scanners,"_ Zoe pointed out. _"Wouldn't take but five minutes to find out which one of these skeletons still has atmo."_

"And it'd take a Dominion ship less than five seconds to pick up an active scan if one of'em happens to be in range," Mal said. "We do this quietly. Might take longer, but if it keeps us from getting tossed in a labor camp for illegal salvaging I'll call it a net win."

_"Not if we freeze to death before we find the _go tsao-de_ cargo,"_ Jayne growled.

"Just keep your eyes peeled and your mouth shut," Mal ordered.

They floated past the carcass of an old _Behemoth_-class battlecruiser bearing Confederate markings, and Mal looked away before the all-too-familiar insignia could dredge up any unwelcome memories. As he did, he caught a reflection of himself in the curvature of his suit's visor; crows' feet at the corners of his eyes, ragged brown hair, and a face that had once been young and eager but had since fallen victim to hard living.

_Fifteen years and interstellar war does wonders for your looks._

"_Hey, I think I got somethin'."_

Jayne's sudden report snapped Mal out of his thoughts, and he rotated to see look in his direction. His employee's hardskin was floating towards the forward half of a _Hercules_-class troop carrier, and as Mal watched Jayne swung his magboots forward until their soles attached to the ship's outer hull.

"_My suit's readin' pressure in this tin can,"_ Jayne reported. _"Think this might be it?"_

"First likely candidate we've had so far," Mal replied as he and Zoe changed course to follow Jayne's lead. By the time they had "landed" on the outside of the ship Jayne was already moving towards a docking hatch on the carrier's port side.

Mal moved over to Jayne's side, his hand reaching for the oversized toolbelt strapped to his hardskin. His fingers closed around the handle of the sticky, a glue gun they had modified for their use in this salvage job. With slow, careful motions Mal placed the tip of the tool along the hatch seam and pulled the trigger, drawing the gun along the seam as a clear gel emerged from the tip. It took the better part of two minutes to trace the outline of the hatch, and by the time he had finished his circuit he could see the gel beginning to bubble and sink into the neosteel like hot wire through butter.

Mal gently pushed away from the hull, moving to one side mere seconds before the hatch exploded outward like a bullet from a gun. Air rushed out of the hole in the ship's hull for nearly half a minute before dying down.

"All right," Mal said with a touch of optimism in his voice as he pulled himself into the hatch and activated the floodlights on his hardskin's chestplate. "Search this wreck top to bottom. If we find the goods, we haul'em back to _Serenity_ and get the hell out of here. I gotta feeling we're overstaying our welcome."

* * *

><p>Roughly five hundred meters away, a starship floated among the wrecks. With a curving neck, two outrigger atmospheric thruster pods flanking a box-shaped cargo bay, and bulbous aft end the ship almost resembled one of the many species of fireflies commonly found on many Terran worlds. Unlike the field of debris surrounding it the small transport displayed signs of life: running lights from the cockpit, small flickers of motion at the bulbous engine in the aft section, and the occasional burp from the maneuvering thrusters to keep the vessel from colliding with the interior of the abandoned superfreighter it was using as a shelter from the debris. Aside from these telltale signals, outwardly the ship seemed to be just as adrift as the other hulks floating by.<p>

Inside the confines of the cockpit, however, an epic battle raged.

"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"

The velociraptor, an extinct creature from Earth's ancient past, cackled malevolently as it advanced on the cowering stegosaurus. "Yes…and now, you die!"

Lunging forward, it slashed at its victim with the wickedly curved claw on its toe, cutting deeply into the stegosaurus' flank.

"No!" the herbivore cried in pain and fear, "Oh, God no!"

As it fell on its side, the velociraptor pounced upon its prey and clamped its toothy maw down on the stegosaurus' neck, drawing even more blood.

"Oh, dear God in heaven–!"

Suddenly a piercing wail shattered the brutal conflict. The two dinosaurs clattered to the ground, their leathery hides replaced with cheap painted plastic. As the alarm continued to wail, the man behind the control console aboard _Serenity's_ bridge swept aside the toys he had been entertaining himself with.

Hoban Washburne took one look at the screaming sensor readings and said "Oh, motherless son of a b–"

* * *

><p>Mal and Zoe had just shoved the last crate out of the hold towards Jayne and were clomping towards the open hatch when their helmet radios crackled. Wash's voice emerged, tinged with panic. <em>"Cap'n, we've got a Dominion battlecruiser burning right towards us!"<em>

Mal's blood went cold, but he kept the worry from showing on his face. "They see you yet?"

_"Can't say–"_

"Then shut everything down," Mal ordered before dropping the channel. He turned to Jayne and Zoe, gesturing to the quartet of meter-long crates they had retrieved from the Hercules. "Start hauling these back, double-time."

"_If that battlecruiser finds us with these we're humped,"_ Jayne said as he floated towards two of the boxes.

_"If they find us at all we're humped,"_ Zoe corrected as she grabbed a third.

"So we hurry, and they don't find us 'till we're wavin' them goodbye," Mal said. His glove closed on the oversized handle of the last crate, and he pushed off the hull in the direction of _Serenity_.

* * *

><p>As the <em>Minotaur<em>-class battlecruiser _Hephaestus_ navigated the scrap field, Captain James Bates reflected once more on how dismally boring his career had become.

It had been four years since the end of the Brood War, and he still had yet to determine exactly what he'd done to deserve a transfer to such an obscure and backwater assignment. He'd served in the fight against the various alien menaces and dissident elements that had arisen to challenge His Majesty's new Dominion, and while he hadn't won any medals Bates had liked to think that he had done his duty to the best of his ability. He'd survived while countless officers had either been killed in action or simply broke under the strain. When the war had finally ended and the human race had begun to pick up the pieces, Bates had hoped to be rewarded for his loyal service.

And now here he was, commanding one of the most powerful ships in His Majesty's navy…patrolling a scrap yard in a system so far removed from Korhal it hadn't even been on his ship's charts when he'd stepped aboard.

He'd tried to view this as just another service to the Emperor and the Dominion…but as time passed and his numerous requests for transfer were ignored, he began to fear that this was what fate intended for him from the start; an unassuming man with an unremarkable career, forever keeping watch over an unimportant graveyard from another time.

The _Hephaestus'_ sensor operator turned in his chair to look Bates in the eyes. "No readings in sector thirteen, sir. Grid is clear."

Bates didn't even bother straightening in his command chair; everyone else on the bridge was just as utterly bored as he was.

He waved his hand absently while propping his head up with the other. "Very well, Ensign. Proceed to sector fourteen."

"Proceeding to sector fourteen; aye sir."

* * *

><p>The battlecruiser drifted through the edge of the field, its massive engines producing an ominous blue corona in its wake. Wash's eyes alternated from staring at his readouts in anxiety to staring at the 'cruiser in anxiety. It didn't seem to be changing course to enter the field; in fact, he didn't see any sign that they had noticed <em>Serenity<em> at all, blacked out as she was.

_"Wash, you there?"_

He groped for the radio, unwilling to take his eyes away from neither ship nor console. "Uh yeah, I'm here."

_"What's the 'cruiser doing? They see us?"_

"Doesn't look like it…if they continue on their course for a minute or two we should be staring up their drives."

_"Good. We're about a minute from the airlock, so get ready to power it up when I say."_

* * *

><p>A piece of debris bounced off <em>Hephaestus'<em> forward shield, crumpling as it came into contact with a suddenly-visible cocoon of azure hexagonal panels. The shield shimmered, then disappeared from the visible spectrum. Bates idly glanced at the readouts next to his elbow out of habit: no damage, and the shields were already back to full.

_Even my _ship_ is contemptuous of this assignment,_ he thought with equal parts amusement and frustration. The Brontes system was just one of ten on Bates's monthly patrol route, but their sweep of the salvage yard always seemed to take an eternity compared to their other stops. _If the local militia wasn't staffed by damn colonial yokels, I wouldn't have to–_

"Sir?"

Bates started slightly, realizing with some embarrassment that he'd nearly dozed off in front of his crew. He sat up straight in his command chair and sniffed. "Yes, Ensign?"

"The sensors are picking up some kind of activity on one of the wrecks in sector fourteen. I'm getting a heat signature."

Bates stared at the man blankly, unable to understand what he'd said at first. After a moment, he cleared his throat and leaned forward with interest. "Focus your scans on sector fourteen. Helm, bring us about." As the sensor operator and helmsman began entering commands into their consoles, Bates realized his heart was pounding just a little; not once during any of their countless prior sweeps of the field had they encountered anything unusual. He unconsciously leaned forward in his command chair, tapping the fingers of his right hand against the armrest as though that would hasten the scan.

* * *

><p>Wash's readout beeped rapidly as the invisible cone of the battlecruiser's long-range sensors shifted to envelope <em>Serenity<em>.

He cursed and brought the radio to his mouth. "Uh, Cap'n?"

"_Yeah, Wash?"_

"We're humped."

* * *

><p>Mal watched as the battlecruiser's forward momentum slowed. It ponderously rotated along its horizontal axis to bring its hammerhead-shaped bow about, directed at the wrecked superfreighter <em>Serenity<em> was nestled inside of. "Oh, that's all sorts of bad."

_"They're trying to hail us,"_ Wash reported. _"I think they got a good fix on our hidey-hole."_

"Prep the ship," Mal ordered. The three of them were roughly two hundred meters away from _Serenity_, and that distance was closing fast. He estimated they would be at the superfreighter's hull in thirty seconds, and inside _Serenity's_ airlock ten seconds after that. If the battlecruiser didn't get a response to its hails in the next few seconds, it would probably deploy fighters to bring them in.

Assuming its commander wasn't in a bad mood and didn't decide to just vaporize their cover.

Zoe must have come to the same conclusion. _"Gonna be close, sir."_

"Always is," he said reassuringly while feeling none of it himself.

* * *

><p>As soon as Mal gave the order, Wash's free hand started flipping toggles and switches back into their active positions. He swiveled into his seat towards the corridor that ran all the way from the cockpit to the engine room at the freighter's aft end. "Kaylee! Fire it up!"<p>

Kaywinnit Lee Frye, or Kaylee to the rest of her crewmates, was huddled up in the hammock hanging in a corner of _Serenity's_ cramped engine room. The center of the room was dominated by a large cylindrical turbine covered in a motley collection of engine parts, each and every one critical, and various toolkits and other mechanic's items were almost haphazardly strewn around it. The turbine generated the power necessary for nearly every system in the vessel; life support, sublight drives, warp engines…all of it depended on the beating heart in front of her.

Kaylee sprang from her hammock at Wash's voice. "Comin' up!" With a few quick adjustments on a number of the turbine's parts, she brought the engine back online before tugging on the control level hooked up to the turbine's axis. It began to rotate faster and faster while a low hum emerged from deep within the ship. For Kaylee, there was not a more comforting sound in the universe.

She turned to the hatch and hollered towards the cockpit. "Wash! You're good!"

* * *

><p>"Have they responded to our hails?" Bates asked, allowing a little excitement into his voice despite his efforts to remain composed.<p>

"Negative, sir." A beep emerged from the sensor display. "Sir, they're powering up."

Bates' heart beat even faster. _Smugglers, perhaps. Or illegal salvagers. Either way I'll get a commendation for this!_

"Sound general quarters," he ordered, clearing his throat after noting in annoyance the boyish eagerness in his voice. "Launch the alert fighters and broadcast a message to the freighter."

"Lieutenant Jenkins reports his pilots are prepping their ships now, sir," the fighter coordinator replied after a moment.

"Channel open, sir," the communications officer added.

Bates cleared his throat again and depressed the transmit button on his armrest. "Unidentified vessel, this is the Dominion warship HMS _Hephaestus_. Transmit your ID signature and salvage authorization immediately…"

* * *

><p>"…<em>or prepare to be detained."<em>

The Dominion commander's voice sounded like he almost wished they wouldn't comply, and as _Serenity's_ airlock cycled open Mal knew the battlecruiser would only wait seconds before making good on its threat. As soon as the outer door had opened wide enough Mal shoved his crate inside, letting it bounce off the inner door as he climbed inside to allow Jayne and Zoe's crates to follow his. The other two crewmembers followed suit, and as the outer door slowly began to close Mal couldn't help but grind his teeth anxiously.

* * *

><p>The comm officer turned to look at Bates and shook his head. "No response, sir. Lieutenant Jenkins is requesting orders."<p>

Outside the viewport, Bates could see the Wraiths of the lieutenant's flight forming up and setting a course for the freighter's location. "Have him bracket the freighter as it emerges from cover and escort it to the starboard troop bay," he said.

"What if it doesn't comply, sir?"

Bates glared at the officer. "Then I suppose it's a good thing the alert fighters have _weapons_, isn't it?"

* * *

><p>The airlock doors cycled shut, and as air began hissing into the cramped compartment the floating crates fell to the floor with a muted <em>thud<em>. Mal felt his boots contact the metal floor as the ship's artificial gravity seized his suit, and with a massive gloved fist he punched the intercom button next to the inner door. "Wash, we're on! Go!"

Lieutenant Jenkins gripped the control yoke of his Wraith with white-knuckled fingers as he led the other five fighters in his group towards their objective. The superfreighter their target was using for shelter had been hulled by a powerful blast that had blown a hole through the port side, opening the hollow cargo section open to space and nearly cracking the entire thing in half. Seeing no other obvious means of entry, he maneuvered his fighter directly towards the hole and brought it to a dead stop. His pilots followed suit, and soon the breach was covered by the overlapping guns of six Wraiths. _Not bad for pilots that haven't had anything to do for months,_ he thought with a small sense of pride.

"Unidentified ship, this is Lyote One," he said over a clear channel. "Show yourself immediately and prepare to receive rendezvous instructions."

There was no answer.

"Three, Four, get in there and flush them out."

The two pilots acknowledged, their voices leaking with anticipation, and they pulled out of the envelopment formation to dive straight into the hole.

At that precise moment, there was a brief flash of light at the corner of Jenkin's eye. He turned his head to port and saw a cloud of debris being ejected from the cargo ship's aft section by the explosion he'd just seen.

Debris, and a battered-looking tramp freighter.

Jenkins cursed as he hauled his fighter around and fed power to the thrusters. "Three and Four, break off and form up! Lyotes, on me!" As his fighter's forward velocity steadily increased, Jenkins berated himself for his complacency. _Stupid to assume they wouldn't have a backup plan, stupid to think they'd just trap themselves in a box with one way out…_

Around him the other fighters of Lyote Flight were likewise gaining speed, and as they began to weave and juke past tumbling pieces of wreckage Jenkins knew that they would be on the freighter seconds before it was clear to jump away.

He growled inside his helmet. _Seconds are all we'll need._

* * *

><p>Mal, no longer encased in the bulky carapace of his CMC armor, all but flew up the metal stairs from the cargo hold to the ship's spine. He hauled himself into the cockpit with both rails to see Wash at the helm, both hands maintaining a death grip on the pilot's yoke as <em>Serenity<em> wove between derelict ships and tumbling flotsam. "How're we doing?"

"Well," Wash said hesitantly, "we're still in a floating scrap yard, we've got half a dozen smaller and faster ships on our tails, and we won't be clear enough to risk a jump for another thirty seconds. Overall, pretty good."

A quick glance at the sensor display told Mal that their ploy had worked; the fighters were maneuvering around the superfreighter in an attempt to catch _Serenity_ before she could escape the field, wasting precious seconds. The battlecruiser's engines were flaring to life, and the massive ship began to force its way into the debris field. _Amateur mistake,_ he thought with satisfaction. _It'll take them longer to muscle through all this horsecrap than if they'd just gone around._

Wash abruptly yanked back on the yoke, and _Serenity_ rose just above the dorsal hull of the troop carrier they'd gotten the goods from. Behind them one of the pursuing Wraiths fired a potshot; the ruby-red laser bolt splashed against the personnel carrier's armor and blew open yet another hole in its hull.

Mal heard boots clambering up the stairwell, and suddenly Zoe appeared beside him. "How long till we can jump?"

"About five seconds after they blow us out of space," came Wash's reply. As if to emphasize his point, two more of the Wraiths opened fire, stitching space around them with burst laser fire. Wash sent _Serenity_ into a series of evasive spirals, aiming down and to starboard to use the separated bow section of a bisected battlecruiser for cover.

As soon as the wreckage blocked the fighter's line of sight, however, he cut power to the main drive and fired the maneuvering jets below the cockpit. _Serenity_ flipped onto her "back"–due to the lack of gravity in deep space there was no up or down, but relative to the fighters they were now upside down–just as Wash fired the drive again. _Serenity_ slowed, came to a stop, and started accelerating in the opposite direction…just as the Wraiths rounded the corner less than a hundred meters distant.

They opened fire as soon as they saw _Serenity_, but the freighter was much closer than they had anticipated and was burning hard towards them. One bolt skimmed her belly shields just before she shot through the center of their formation and made for the nearest edge of the field as the fighters desperately tried to come about to get back on her tail.

A loose bulkhead rebounded off _Serenity's_ forward shield as Wash kept her on a straight and narrow course. Mal grabbed the hatch frame to steady himself as another piece of junk bounced off their port thruster. "Wash?" he asked anxiously as the fighters finally settled back onto their tail and began closing to weapons range again.

There was a warning tone from the console, and Zoe leaned over the readout. "We've got a missile lock!"

Two flashing red blips appeared on the sensor display, emerging from the closest of the Wraiths and closing the range on _Serenity_ with alarming speed.

Mal waited for Wash to go evasive, but his pilot remained on course. "Wash?"

"Almost…" Wash replied, and Mal saw his right hand hovering over the jump controls.

The edge of the field opened up in front of them, seconds away. Mal almost ordered Wash to jump then and there, but he knew that even the edges of the field were too crowded with wreckage to risk jumping. It would be like throwing oneself on top of a board full of nails.

The missiles continued to close.

Two seconds turned into an eternity.

Just as the missiles closed to within fifty meters of _Serenity_, Wash yanked back on the control lever for the warp drive. Space distorted around them, and Mal's stomach did backflips as _Serenity_ leapt to safety.

* * *

><p>Bates watched helplessly as the freighter seemingly elongated to touch a distant star thousands of light-years away, a side-effect of faster than light jumps. After a split second, there was a flash of light and the ship's aft section snapped forward like a rubber band. When the flash cleared, the ship was gone.<p>

Gone.

Lyote One's missiles were crushed by the invisible pressure wave created by the jump, and for a long moment two miniature suns marked the spot where Bates' career had been irreversibly ruined. Lyote Flight continued on its present course for several seconds, as if afraid to return–_as well they should be_, a small part of him thought bitterly–before looping around and heading for _Hephaestus_.

"Freighter has escaped, captain," one of the bridge officers reported redundantly. Bates was too absorbed in his own misery to even snap at the man for the obviousness of his statement. His command chair, full of power and promise moments ago, now seemed to swallow him whole as the gravity of what had just happened came crushing down on him. _My one chance. The only opportunity I had to escape this dismal fate, and now it's gone._

Bates suppressed a moan of despair as he realized there was now no hope of him ever being reassigned. After today he would be patrolling fringe sectors until he was eighty, trapped in a dead-end assignment until the heat death of the universe.

Slowly, like a man unsure if his legs would support him, Bates stood from his chair. He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. "Lieutenant Monroe," he said, surprised at the softness of his voice, "you have the bridge. Complete the sweep. I'll be in my quarters."

With that, Captain James Bates turned and strode off the bridge to file his report. As he entered the lift and allowed it to carry him away, Bates wondered what class of freighter the salvagers had been flying. He made a mental note to consult the ship's sensor logs and include the ship's signature in his report.

At the very least, he could help ensure that someone else would catch that damnable tramp ship.

* * *

><p><em>Serenity<em> emerged from its warp jump in the orbit of a ball of ice that was too far from its unnamed star to support life.

Wash leaned back in his seat as he massaged his aching hands. "Ladies and gentlemen, Dylarian Air hopes you have enjoyed your flight. We ask that you please wait until the craft has come to a complete and total stop before demanding a refund, and please don't forget to return your complimentary peanuts."

Zoe smiled, reaching around Wash's neck from behind the pilot's chair to kiss him on the brow. "That's my husband."

Mal leaned against the cockpit hatch a little more heavily than he intended to. "We got enough in the tank to reach Nephor?"

Wash leaned out of Zoe's embrace to check his controls. "Uh, yeah, looks like. We'd better fill her up when we get there, though. Only got about a quarter of a pod left."

Mal pushed off from the hatch and tugged it open. "Won't be a problem; long as we get Badger his goods, we'll have more'n enough to top up on fuel." He started down the stairs as Zoe came around the pilot's chair to kiss Wash again, shutting the hatch behind him as Wash returned the favor.

When Mal returned to _Serenity's_ cavernous–compared to the ship's other compartments, at least–cargo hold, Jayne had already removed the cover to the smuggling compartment built into the portside bulkhead and was sliding the crates inside.

"Now _that_ was somethin'," the burly Kel-Morian remarked as he shoved the last box inside with the sole of his boot. He got a hold of the compartment's cover plate and heaved, lifting the heavy slab of metal back into place before Mal could move to help him. Now the panel looked just like all of the others surrounding it, with no indication of the treasure it concealed.

"We headin' for the rendezvous?" Jayne asked as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Wash's settin' the course now," Mal replied. "…Or will be any minute now," he added, remembering how he'd left the married couple. Seeing that Jayne had finished stowing the cargo, he turned to climb the stairs back to the spine.

"Hot damn," Jayne crowed. "Then I guess we win."

Mal stopped on the stairs, turning back to Jayne in confusion. "Huh?"

His crewman shrugged. "Well, we got the goods, we got away, and now we're gonna get paid. We even mooned the Dominion while we were at it." He grinned. "Sounds like a win to me."

Mal thought about the Confederate battlecruiser, a remnant of a war long since over left to drift in the dregs of space, forgotten by everyone. He glanced around, taking in _Serenity's_ hold. Rusted bulkheads, scuffed metal, hastily-welded patches…

Then he looked down at himself. He was clad in a faded and patched Confederate officer's trousers and a dirty brown buttoned shirt. His sidearm hung from a faded leather holster, the handle worn smooth from a decade and a half of use.

_Drifting in the dregs of space…_

Mal looked back at Jayne. Less than a second had passed.

"Yeah," he said. "We win."


	3. Chapter Two

**Nephor System, Core Worlds**

**September 18****th****, 2504**

With a flicker of distorted space and a flash of light, _Serenity_ leapt out of warp between the twin planets of Nephor. Dominion defense platforms, huge rectangular slabs of neosteel dotted with running lights and gun turrets, loomed all around the comparatively tiny vessel as she made for the second planet. As the transport's bow began to caress Nephor II's atmosphere, the thruster pods on either side of her main body rotated forward and ignited. Her acceleration slowed, and she began to glow from reentry.

Wash watched from inside the safety of the cockpit as flames danced across the viewport. A quick glance at his monitors reassured him that their angle of reentry was shallow enough to avoid burning up, and he allowed himself to relax for a moment. As _Serenity_ completed her transition from space to atmo, he rested his hands on the control yoke once more and rotated the pods back aft before firing them again and setting a course for Persephone, Nephor II's capital city.

Mal entered the cockpit just as Persephone came into view. Unlike many of the planets in the Core of Terran space, Nephor II lacked the towering cityscapes that dominated Korhal IV and had dominated Tarsonis during the days of the Confederacy. Instead, the most notable features of the planet were the vast factory districts that stretched on for dozens of kilometers around the planet's major spaceports. Black smoke snaked into the skies below _Serenity_, almost blocking out Wash and Mal's view of the industrial snarl of buildings below. Refineries, production centers, traffic control towers, and mass workman's living complexes were all crammed around the Persephone spaceport. A steady stream of cargo haulers and bulk freighters connected the port to low orbit like the strands of a spider's web, carrying raw materials to its processing centers and ferrying manufactured goods and materials to various planets across the Dominion.

Wash maneuvered _Serenity_ into one of the docking lanes that led to a sprawling honeycomb of landing pads. Nearly all were occupied, but with every passing second ship after ship would light its engines and lift off from its respective pad, to be replaced seconds later by the next vessel in line. After only a few minutes' wait, Wash was able to slip between a pair of heavy lifters burning for space and bring _Serenity_ down onto a once-occupied pad.

As Wash began shutting down the ship's systems, Mal unholstered his gun and checked the clip for the third time since they had entered atmo. Nephor was on a long list of places he didn't particularly enjoy visiting, and not just because of the heavy Dominion presence; as long as manufacturing and production maintained its schedule, the Emperor's lackeys were content to sit in their orbital battlestations and let the planet's overseers handle Nephor II's affairs. That very lack of official attention was the main reason their employer had chosen the planet for his base of operations…the second being the planet's thriving criminal underground.

Mal was almost certain the Dominion had an idea of the extent of Nephor's corruption and back-alley dealings; it was also likely they had simply chosen to ignore it so long as it didn't adversely affect the planet's raw output by any noticeable pecentage. To attempt to weed it out would no doubt interfere with production, and if there was one thing the Dominion was desperate about it was rebuilding from the Brood War. The Zerg were still a looming and ever-present threat despite their four-year dormancy, and the scars from the Great War and Brood Wars were still very much fresh in every Terran's mind.

Mal smacked the clip back into his pistol and slid it back into its holster before tucking both beneath his duster. "Inara give us a ring while we were comin' down?" he asked Wash.

"Ah…" His pilot turned to consult the comm for a moment. "No, but the shuttle's still parked up at the regional overseer's tower. I'd guess she's still busy with her client." Wash arched an eyebrow at Mal. "Want me to call her up and tell her to get ready to buzz out?"

"No," Mal said quickly, clearing his throat. "No, it's fine. Just checkin'." As he turned to head for the cargo bay, he muttered under his breath, "Heaven forbid somebody on my ship make an honest living."

* * *

><p>Inara Serra stared at the ceiling as she lay in bed beside the snoring overseer of Nephor II and allowed her mind to wander.<p>

Above her, the numerous stars of Terran space twinkled and shone. One by one her gaze moved between each of the Core worlds, summoning holographic images of the planets in those system as her eyes focused on each one. Korhal, Tyrador, Dylar, Nephor…

She paused as her eyes fell on the tiny dot representing Tarsonis, then shifted her attention to the stars in the Umojan protectorate before the interface could conjure forward any out-of-date travel pictures of the former Confederate capital. _It's incredible,_ she thought to herself as she absent-mindedly surveyed the lush waterfalls of Umoja, _just how far people will go to ignore what makes them uncomfortable_.

The fall of Tarsonis and the old Confederacy had been just over four years ago, yet many Terran citizens in the Dominion seemed to prefer not to think about it. Even the state-sponsored media, which had once taken great joy in attacking the perceived evils of the Confederate government–and ignoring that many of those same evils were to this day perpetuated by the Dominion government–often glazed over the final days of the Great War. Instead, in recent years UNN had shifted its sights to outlaw rebel groups such as the notorious Raynor's Raiders, or the Koprulu Liberation Front.

Ironically its anchors condemned the actions of what it referred to as "anti-human terrorists", claiming that in the face of extraterrestrial threats such as the Zerg and Protoss all Terrans should band together under one banner–the Dominion's, of course–in order to present the aliens with a unified front. Only after humanity's safety had been secured, they argued, could the various political factions and dissidents present their grievances to His Majesty…ignoring the fact that their beloved leader had only come to power after leading a revolution against the Confederacy and crowning himself Emperor!

_It's incredible how quickly people forget the past when it makes them uncomfortable._

Overseer Klein snorted beside Inara, jerking her out of her self-indulgent mental wanderlust. The images of her beautiful Umoja vanished as the ceiling's sensors detected her eyes flickering away from the stars, and for a long moment she was alone in Klein's opulent quarters atop his personal tower.

Klein's taste in material wealth and interior design were…eclectic, to be certain. Various works of art dominated his walls, none of them following any sort of pattern or theme other than the fact that all were ludicrously expensive. Holographic projectors such as the ones installed in his ceiling were placed almost at random around the room, displaying everything from production reports to local and sector news and security camera displays. There was even a Zergling skull contained within a glass case on the far wall, although Inara didn't allow her eyes to linger for too long on the empty eye sockets. She had never seen a live Zerg outside of the news broadcasts from both Wars…but the skull seemed to radiate alien and predatory malice as it seemingly stared back at her, toothed jaw and mandibles forever spread wide open as though the long-dead creature was preparing to pounce.

Inara shivered involuntarily, and the motion drew another snort from Klein as he rolled away from her. She could have sworn she had heard a distinctive clicking screech emerge from the skull as she had looked away. She dismissed the phantom and looked back up at the ceiling to view Umoja once more…but drew the thick velvet comforter up to her shoulders anyway as Klein continued to snore obliviously.

* * *

><p>As <em>Serenity's<em> cargo ramp clattered to the deck, Mal and the rest of the shore party were already halfway down. The sharp odor of industrial chemicals and byproducts assaulted his nose almost immediately, and his eyes burned slightly from the harsh glare of the planet's star through the abused ozone layer. Beside him Zoe, Jayne, and Kaylee clambered down the ramp, coughing as they acclimated themselves to the smell. Kaylee passed around respirators, which everyone was only too glad to wear–Nephor's atmosphere wasn't toxic to humans, but the abundance of pollutants in the cities was detrimental to their health. Once again, Mal was glad that they were only performing a simple delivery; the faster they got off this dying rock, the better.

"All right," Mal said through his mask, his voice mechanically filtered by the comm, "Here's how we do this. Zoe, you and Jayne with me: we'll go make the drop with Badger. Kaylee, log into the terminal net and see if you can find us some passengers. ATC might look a little too close to us if we log no cargo coming in and going out."

"Got it, Cap'n," the mechanic replied. She pulled out a battered and scratched datapad and began thumbing controls.

"Wash, get the tug and stock us up on anything we ain't got enough of. Start with fuel first, I reckon we got enough protein for a few days yet."

Kaylee spoke up. "While we're here, it'd be nice if we could pick up some extra components for the engine–"

"Don't get carried away," Mal said as Wash revved up the four-wheeler and started to roll it down the ramp, towing an empty cargo trailer behind it. "Just get us the kind of passengers that can pay. Can't spend our money before Badger even gives it to us."

"Compression coil's been groaning since we made that drop on Antiga," Kaylee protested. "Coil craps out, then _Serenity_ starts drifting."

Mal flashed a small smile at her from behind his mask. "Won't crap out. Got too good a mechanic for that to happen."

Kaylee sighed and shook her head as she continued to flip through transport bookings. Mal, Jayne, and Zoe set off towards the entrance to the pad.

If there was one thing that could top Persephone's smell, it was the cacophony of sound that assaulted Mal's ears as they left the starport.

Outside the walls of the pad and the terminal, thousands of people hurried about their daily lives. Passengers, workers, off-duty freighter pilots, and people of many more professions crammed the roads as Mal, Zoe, and Jayne attempted to navigate to their rendezvous. More than once Mal bumped into an inattentive bystander, but each time he made sure to brush his wallet with a free hand afterwards. Pickpockets were a credit a dozen in Persephone thanks to the huge crowds.

Another reason Mal hated the place.

After half an hour's walk, they reached a familiar-looking alley nestled between two tenement apartments. A ragged-looking homeless man leaned against one wall, apparently sipping from a flask without paying them any attention, but Mal knew better. He stepped forward and tapped the man on his shoulder. "_Zhèlǐ huān_," he murmured in the man's ear.

The hobo turned slightly, and Mal felt the barrel of a concealed pistol poke into his stomach. The sentry turned to get a look at him from beneath his hood, squinting as he tried to recognize Mal's face. After a moment the pistol retreated back into his coat, and he jerked his head towards the alley.

Mal surreptitiously waved Zoe and Jayne to follow him as he headed into the alley.

After a handful of twists and turns, they came to a stretch of cloth hung between the two buildings. Mal gave a low whistle and held both hands away from his gunbelt; Zoe and Jayne did likewise.

The barrel of a light gauss rifle protruded from the cloth, followed by the scraggily face of one of Badger's scavengers. He glanced back and forth between the new arrivals for a moment before lowering his gun and pulling the curtain aside for the trio. Without a second glance, Mal stepped inside.

Badger's lair was a ramshackle collection of mismatches prefab walls welded together beneath a slab of neosteel, slanted to one side and etched with the marks of Nephor II's periodic acid rains. As Mal entered, half a dozen thugs armed with various slugthrowers and needle guns rose, as if to train their weapons on him.

"_Dung ee hwar,_" a voice rasped from behind the desk at the far end of the room.

The goons glanced back and saw the upraised hand from the other side of the worn swivel chair and relaxed, although all of them kept their eyes on Mal as he crossed the room…and their hands on their weapons.

Mal stopped a couple of meters from the desk and hooked his thumbs in his belt as the chair slowly rotated to reveal a man dressed in a ragged business suit. Beneath an equally-tattered hat that wouldn't have looked out of place in an Old Family Ball shined the dim red beam of a prosthetic eye. It and its organic twin gave Mal a long once-over as its owner tapped his fingers on the desk.

Finally, Badger stood and made his way around the desk, slowly pacing the perimeter of the room. "You're late."

Mal shot Zoe a look and arched his brow. "_Fuhn pi_."

Badger stopped and locked his eyes on Mal, a look of incredulity crossing the organic half of his face. "What was that?"

"I said you're lying," Mal replied. He started pacing as well, matching Badger's course on the opposite side of the room as the crime lord resumed his walk. Mal began ticking off his fingers as he talked. "We're here a day ahead of schedule, you know we wouldn't've come back without the goods, and we weren't followed. All in all, everythin' went as planned for me and mine…so you being ornery off the bat means somethin' _ain't_ gone right for you."

Both of them stopped their circle where they had begun. Badger leaned against his desk and crossed both arms, and Mal stood in front of Jayne and Zoe with his thumbs in his belt.

"So," Mal continued, "why don't you tell us how your day's going? Step in somethin'? Lose your wallet? Wife left you?"

Badger snorted. "Matter'a fact, my best crew got their asses caught by the marines. Lost a nice tidy sum'a credits because their dumb asses decided ta buzz a battlecruiser on the job. Got scanned. I 'ad to turn down their salvage so's I wouldn't get pinched myself."

Mal's gut went cold…but he adopted an amused smile and took a pair of steps forward. "Shame. Don't make a lotta sense, though, you backin' out of a perfectly good deal just 'cuz your team got scanned. You must got lots of connections here; gotta have a safe way of unloading goods like that without drawin' attention."

Badger shrugged. "Yeah. I do." He slowly walked around the desk to sit back in his chair, putting his booted feet on the surface. "But not if every bit of the cargo in those crates has a government seal carved into it."

Mal's jaw dropped slightly. "What?"

Badger flashed him a grim smile. "Seems my contacts forgot to mention the little detail that those crates're marked. I try and pass them off, and there's a big chance some of His Majesty's goons'll come knockin' shortly after."

Mal closed his eyes and sighed quietly. _Frog humping son of a bitch…_

"This ain't right," Zoe said from Mal's side. "You told us what cargo to get and where to get it. We did what you wanted."

Badger shrugged again. "Bad luck, girlie. Guess you'll 'ave to find someone else stupid enough to take the cargo."

"_Hwoon dahn,_" Jayne snarled. "I didn't float around in a tin can for an hour pickin' through carcasses so's some pissant little shit could brush us off–"

The tired smile on Badger's face vanished in an instant, and Mal heard the rapid _clicks_ of safeties disengaging all around them. He didn't have to look behind him to know that Badger's men had their weapons trained on them; instead he shot a glare at Jayne.

The Kel-Morian clenched his jaw and moved his hand away from his gun, which was halfway out of its holster.

Mal turned back to Badger. "Done a lot of work with you these past few months," he said. "Man in your line of business don't stay in business long unless he figures out how to make the best of a bad situation." He stepped forward again until he and Badger were less than a meter apart. Mal was a good foot taller than the other man, but he took care not to lean over him; he was touchy enough as it was. "You throw us to the wolves, you're lettin' go of your best salvagers. Lose quite a bit tryin' to find another crew like mine."

Badger tilted his head. "Like you said…just makin' the best of a bad situation." His smiled reappeared. "No 'ard feelings, eh?"

Jayne made a noise of dissent, but a look from Zoe shut him up. Mal held the gaze of Badger's living eye for a moment before turning and heading for the curtain.

* * *

><p>"Slimy little piece of <em>go se<em>," Jayne grumbled as soon as they were back in the crowd. "Bad contacts, hell; _go-tsao de _bastard set us up."

"Ain't like Badger to give out contracts without knowin' all the details," Zoe agreed. "Besides, he's slippery enough to unload that cargo marked or not."

"So why's he hang us out to dry all of a sudden?" Jayne demanded.

"Doesn't matter," Mal interrupted. "Only thing that worries me now is getting' off this rock before his little prophecy comes true."

Zoe glanced around the crowd. "You reckon Badger'll really hand us to the Dominion to cover his own ass, sir?"

Mal snorted. "As sure as I reckon he'd hand over his own mother."

They walked in silence for several moments. "So what do we do?" Zoe finally asked. "About the cargo, I mean."

"Can't just leave it in the hold, that's for damn sure," Mal answered. "Dominion finds us with salvage like that we'll lose the ship. I ain't gonna let that happen."

"We could dump it–"

"Like fekking hell!" Jayne retorted. "We dump that cargo, we dump our last chance at getting' paid for this run. I jumped ships for the money, not the scenery–"

"_Bizui!_" Mal snapped.

Jayne's next words died on his tongue, but he ground his teeth.

"We're not dumping the goods," Mal continued in a lower voice. "We barely got enough left from our last job to refuel here. If we can't find someone to offload the crates onto, we'll be adrift."

The three of them fell silent as they contemplated that cheerful idea.

"So," Zoe asked, "where should we look?"

Mal shrugged. "Should have enough in the tank to reach the Sara system once Wash fills _Serenity_ up with the credits we got now. Dominion reterraformed Mar and Chau couple years back to start up the mines again. Probably plenty of folks at Backwater Station could use what we got."

"Like who, for example?"

Mal scratched his ear innocently as they reached the door to _Serenity's_ landing pad. "Patience, maybe."

Zoe sighed and closed her eyes. "Sir, she's one of the last people we should deal with."

"What? Why?" Mal asked, knowing full well what the rebuttal would be.

"She _shot_ you."

"I got better!"

"What, so you're figuring she should get a second try?"

"You got a better idea?" Mal shot back.

Zoe crossed her arms and shrugged. "Last I heard, Monty's still buzzing around the Fringe. We could try and get in touch with him–"

Mal barked out a short laugh. "Are you kidding? For all we know it could be days 'fore we find him. We don't got the time or the fuel to go on a goose-chase around the border when we got a likely buyer already lined up."

"Hutchins, then."

"Won't touch it with a ten-foot pole."

"Burke."

"Snatched by the marines two months back."

"Cheryl?"

"Ship wandered too close to Protoss space; nobody knows what happened to her."

"And don't even think of sayin' we should go lookin' for her neither," Jayne interrupted. "I ain't goin' nowhere near a Protoss system. Them freaks'll melt our brains with their minds or someth–"

"Mar Sara," Mal said, continuing as though Jayne had never spoken, "is our best bet at offloading those crates without getting grabbed by the marines. 'Sides which it's been ages since Patience shot me, and admittedly at the time I felt like shootin' her myself! I'm not holding any grudges."

Zoe signed as Mal punched the door controls. "I still think we should find somebody else, sir."

"Your objection's been noted," Mal replied as the doors cycled open, "now let's get going and get off this rock 'fore a couple of hardskins come knocking on our hatch."

Kaylee was ushering a trio of passengers up the cargo ramp as Mal and the others entered the pad. Wash was already on board with a crate's worth of supplies, so Mal took one last look around before following everyone else up the ramp and smacking the controls. The arms slowly retracted, drawing the ramp up, and Mal stepped into the cargo hold as the airlock doors began grinding shut.

"Cap'n," Kaylee said cheerfully as she gestured to the newcomers with one hand, "I found you some folks who want a lift to parts elsewhere."

Kaylee introduced each of the passengers in turn: Shepherd Book, a preacher from Korhal IV looking for a flock on a Fringe world; Simon Tam, a doctor from Tyrador II hoping to set up his own practice on Castanar; and Lawrence Dobson, a civilian contractor also looking for work on Castanar. Mal introduced himself to each of them curtly.

Book was an elderly but well-built man in his mid-fifties with stark white hair pulled back into a knot. He offered Mal a grandfatherly smile when their hands met, but Mal just nodded and shook.

Tam was a well-dressed young man in his early to mid-twenties with the look of the financially-successful. He declined to shake Mal's offered hand and simply bowed his head, his face expressionless.

Dobson was, by all appearances, a clumsy white-collar worker taking his first steps into a new frontier. He dropped one of the two bags tucked under his arms to accept Mal's extended hand, then fumbled with his wallet as he tried to remove enough bills for his ticket.

Kaylee guided the three of them towards the passenger dormitories forward of the hold while Mal leaned against the wall by the smuggling compartment.

Zoe ambled over to him as Book, the last in line, passed through the hatch. "And now, as if possibly having the marines after us wasn't bad enough, we have a trio of civilians sitting on top of our illegal salvage."

Mal rolled his eyes. "Calm down. Long as we keep cool, they'll never know they hitched a ride with illegal salvagers. Just gotta dump those crates with Patience on Mar Sara–"

"Assuming she'll want to deal with us."

"–and we can drop the civvies off where they want to be, with nobody suspecting a damn thing."

"Unless they happen to be the 'noses in other folks' business' sort and find the cargo," Zoe murmured as Dobson stumbled past them with a suitcase under each arm.

"Well, they try stickin' their noses in our business I'm of a mind to have Jayne cut'em off," Mal retorted quietly before turning and heading up the catwalk to the crew deck.

He took one last glance out over the cargo bay as he reached the overlook…and hesitated. Book had brought only a couple of medium-sized travel bags–and a leather Bible, of course–with him, and Dobson had three large "consumer-sized" suitcases he was lugging to the passenger quarters. But the Doctor had only two small bags, one of which was presumably a medical kit, and a large silver crate that Mal hadn't seen when he'd come back aboard. Kaylee must have gotten it loaded before he'd returned with Zoe and Jayne.

He casually leaned over the railing and tilted his head to look like he was taking in the whole cargo hold, while in reality his eyes were locked on Tam's crate. It was about a meter and a half to each side, with a keypad on the front face and an obvious handle on the top. _Doctor sure seems to be the paranoid sort,_ Mal mused as he watched Tam double-check the crate to make sure it was securely tied down. Tam glanced around in what he probably thought was a surreptitious manner before gathering up his bags and briskly strolling to the entrance to the passenger dorm.

Mal watched him leave, a frown creasing his face for a reason he couldn't place. There was something about his walk…

He shook his head and turned to continue up the catwalk. _Now who's getting paranoid?_ He asked himself ruefully.

* * *

><p>As <em>Serenity<em>'s atmospheric thrusters flared and lifted her off the landing pad, Simon knelt by the silver storage unit and checked the readouts. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief as he saw that everything checked out within normal levels; the contents of the safe were intact. He'd been worried about using such a device to transport his cargo, but the men he'd paid had assured him that it would be safe.

All that remained now was to make the three-day journey to Castanar without giving himself away. Then, and only then, would he relax.


End file.
